


Chiaroscuro

by gazastripping



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:07:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26212393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gazastripping/pseuds/gazastripping
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	Chiaroscuro

Dropped mom off at the airport this morning. The sky was flashing with soundless bursts of light the whole way there. Storm clouds were gathering as I pulled away from the drop-off area, dark, lumbering monsters tumbling over each other. The rain hadn’t started yet. That was good. They tell me most plane crashes are due to pilot error, but the image of a clumsy captain losing his way in a storm and slamming into grassland at a hundred and sixty knots on takeoff doesn’t strike fear into my heart the same way mechanical failure does. That way it’s entirely out of your control, your life putty in the notoriously fickle hands of fortune. Or fate. Lately I hadn’t been able to discern the difference. Besides, this stuff can get violent. Remember TWA? Or that Turkish airlines flight? I pick through this stuff on the History channel when I have spare time, but I’ve been thinking that I’m not doing myself too many favors in doing so. 

Had I hugged her goodbye? I couldn’t remember. The rain was already pattering on the windshield, fat droplets descending; a gift from God. To what end, I could not yet perceive, but I supposed I would find out in a few hours. The inevitable call from frantic family, despairing over a nightmare come true. Do loved ones marvel at the odds? Do they pore over numbers and statistics like I do? I had heard once that government employees at the FAA had affixed it with a lovable nickname, “the tombstone agency”. Good pay, but it probably stings to realize you can only affect change ipso facto. What’s the point in dedicating your life to preventing tragedy if you can only get things done after the fact? I read that Boeing was manipulating its stock prices to make it look like the company was doing better than it was. Of course, this comes out only after two fully loaded jumbo jets spiral out of the sky. Everything’s a goddamned scam these days. If the people won’t make noise, God might decide to scream.

Yeah. I figured I’d write these thoughts down in a journal somewhere, maybe type them up online for the benefaction of enterprising readers everywhere. Some things deserve more consideration than others. But to get more you have to have some, and I was coming to realize, as I raced down the parkway, raced to outrun the storm, that the value in art was in its ability to say something unique, and what was more unique than a horrifying, painful, fiery end to two hundred and thirty individual lives? Colorful lights danced in my rearview mirror. Lightning, again? An ambulance, maybe? The wrath of God already upon us?

Revelation did indeed dawn on me. Spar spangled strobes without the white were following from close behind. I checked the speedometer. Going eighty in a forty mile.


End file.
